He settled back, alone in the compartment, the lights out as he watched the countryside slip by. He was nearly a hundred-percent certain that remaining in Bonn would have accomplished nothing for him. If Ganin had ever been there, which he seriously doubted, he would be gone by now. Lydia would be gone as well.
They would all be heading to wherever the killing ground was located. The final confrontation would come very soon, only Kobelev was in for a nasty surprise before it happened.
The train stopped in Frankfurt for twenty minutes a few hours later. Carter cautiously got off and went upstairs to the vast terminal, at the early hour nearly deserted except for the maintenance crew.
At one of the telephone kiosks he placed a credit card call to Smitty in Washington, D.C., and before the Operations chief could make any objections, Carter passed on some hurried instructions and hung up.
From vending machines Carter bought a couple of beers and a sandwich, then reboarded the train. A few minutes later it pulled out of the station for the long haul down to Mannheim, Stuttgart, Augsburg, and finally Munich.
After he ate, he managed to get some sleep until the cold dawn broke gray over the German countryside. In the small pull-down sink in his compartment, Carter splashed some water on his face, then rang the porter for coffee and the morning newspapers.
There was no mention in the Frankfurt newspaper about the incident in Bonn, but then Carter would have been surprised had there been anything. He searched for something else in the newspaper’s international section, finally spotting what he took to be a possibility. An American NATO adviser and his wife, whose first name was listed in the paper as Lydia, were killed when an avalanche suddenly roared down over a high pass road sweeping their car over the edge. One witness reported hearing a large bang, such as the noise an avalanche cannon might make. The report, however, had so far been unconfirmed.
The incident occurred late yesterday near Innsbruck, the Austrian skiing town barely a hundred miles south of Munich.
Carter put the paper down. If the Innsbruck mention were another Kobelev flag, and he expected it was, the puppet master would be expecting him to make his way there immediately.
Carter smiled inwardly, his eyes hard and cold. He would go to Innsbruck, all right. But not right away. First he was going to strike back in Munich. Fie was going to draw Ganin back into Germany. He’d play them at their own game.
It was raining and gusting in Munich when Carter got off the train and stepped outside the ornate railway station. Charlie Mann, his AXE contact in Munich, was waiting at the curb in a battered BMW sedan.
Carter crossed the broad sidewalk and climbed into the car. Immediately Mann pulled away from the curb and headed past the Frauenkirche, the twin church towers symbolizing the city.
“All hell has been breaking loose overnight,” Mann said.
“Anything from Bonn?”
Mann nodded. “Hawk’s been on the horn with the head of the German Federal Police. They want you pretty badly. Seems you roughed up one of their top cops.”
“Anything happening here in Munich?” Carter asked.
“Not a thing, although I suspect that’s about to change.”
“Not until I have a shower and a shave. Did you bring the things I asked for?”
Mann nodded over his shoulder toward the back seat. “In the leather bag. The Bonn police have your things impounded, including a very curious cassette recorder with an unusual circuit board arrangement.”
Carter used the recorder to transport his weapons through airline security systems. If the police had taken it apart, they’d know what it had been used for. It meant they’d know he was armed with more than the Luger.
They drove in silence for the next few minutes. Mann had circled the central downtown area twice before he headed up the Schützenstrasse, very near the railway station they had just left.
“I’ve got you booked at the Excelsior — not the best in town but certainly not the worst. It’s quiet.”
“Have you got my passport?” Carter asked.
Again Mann looked at him. “It was the one thing that made Smitty nervous.”
Carter said nothing.
“The Bonn police have your Scott passport, but Smitty couldn’t understand why you wanted a passport in your own name. It’ll be like a big neon sign for the opposition.”
Carter nodded. “Exactly.”
“I see,” Mann said. “Are you going to need some help here in town?”
“Only under two conditions, Charlie. The first is that you do exactly as I tell you. No questions.”
Mann nodded. “And the second?”
“No matter what happens afterward, you make no attempt to follow me or to offer any further assistance.”
Again Mann nodded. They pulled up to the hotel. “What’s the target?”
“The Soviet compound,” Carter said. “I want to light a little fire under them tonight.”
Mann whistled. “All hell is going to break loose, not only with the Russians but with the German police.”
“I hope so,” Carter said. “I sincerely hope so.” He got out of the car, and Mann handed out his overnight bag. “I’ll meet you in front of the Hofbräuhaus at eight o’clock sharp.”
“Right,” Mann said. “I’ll have the rest of the things with me then.”
Carter got a front room on the first floor. After he had shaved, showered, and changed into some clean clothes, he cleaned and oiled his weapons.
It was nearly noon before he went downstairs, had a light lunch and a beer in the restaurant, then rented a car and headed northwest past the magnificent Schloss Nymphenburg, once the summer residence of the kings of Bavaria.
A half mile beyond the palace’s vast flower gardens and park, Carter cruised slowly by a Romanesque compound partially hidden behind tall stone walls.
This was the Soviet compound from which the trade delegation, on semipermanent assignment to Munich, operated. It was also where many of the Soviet consul’s functions were maintained, and where many of the Aeroflot and Tass employees stayed. It had also long been known as an operations center for KGB activities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. To this point the Germans had tacitly accepted the compound’s existence because it was easily watched. The Germans and the Americans felt that if they closed the place down, KGB operations outside of Berlin would go underground, and would be much more difficult to monitor.
The compound was surrounded on three sides by park and forestland. Only at the front was it open.
Carter parked his rental car a few blocks beyond the compound, and then as if he were simply a tourist out for an afternoon stroll in the park, he circled around to the back, to within fifty yards of the compound’s walls.
From where he stood, Carter could just see the back of the main building within the compound. The roofline bristled with various antennae, all pointing east, back toward the geostationary satellite the Soviets used for communications relay with Moscow.
A West German Air Force helicopter suddenly clattered into view just over the treetops. Carter stepped back against a tree so that he would be out of sight from the air, and watched as the chopper slowly made a pass over the Soviet compound, then disappeared in the distance.
From what Carter understood, these flyovers happened every two hours around the clock. He glanced at his watch. It was just two o’clock. It meant another flyover would be scheduled for four o’clock; then at six, eight, and ten, and throughout the night.
He turned away and went back to his car. At the ten o’clock flyover, the Soviets would be in for a surprise. A very large surprise.